CHAPTER XXII IMAR'S TALE—WAR
"That which I have always admired in your nation, and that which has made you what you are, under the guidance of the Lord, is your natural gift of self-command. The race to which I belong has always been very scant of that great quality; and this fault has been from age to age the cause of misery and conflict. Not that we are by any means so turbulent and vindictive as other tribes around us; for we almost alone are guided, when in our proper state of mind, by any sense of Christianity; most of the others who call themselves of that creed, such as the Ossets, Imeritians, and barbarous Suans, have made a strange jumble of the true faith with Mohammedanism, paganism, and even stark idolatry. But the Lesghians, with whom we have most to do, and who claim us as of their affinity, still are of Islam, and mainly of that bigoted and aggressive form of it which is known as Muridism. Even so, they are nobler, braver, more patriotic, and loyal to their chiefs, as well as of finer presence, and greater activity and industry than most of their neighbours on the west and south, who suppose themselves to be Christians.
"My father, Sûr Dadian, as hereditary Chief of the Kheusurs—a tribe now dwindled from its former strength—commanded for many years their division in the army of the gallant Shamyl. Our people did not share of course that fury of Islam, and blaze of the crescent, which scorched the Russians by the thousand out of the dark ravines of Daghestan. Nevertheless we stood up for ourselves, with the muzzle of a gun at every elbow of the rocks; and if all the sons of Islam had been as faithful to their great Imaum, as the Cross was, the Russian flag would never have waved over Guinib, in Shamyl's lifetime.
"The Russian plan was to press us hard, throughout the summer and autumnal months, with ten men perhaps to every one of ours; to encourage us most benevolently to sow our land and tend it, and then to rejoice and renew their strength with the pithy marrow of our corn, and the juicy fibre of our flocks and herds. A man loves his country on the very same principle on which he loves his mother; but if he can never taste what she is like, he might just as well have a step-mother. Neither was this the only loss of satisfaction year by year. Our men, as I have heard them tell, when I was old enough to join them, felt even worse than their own privations the rich gain of the enemy. To sit on a rock, just out of shot—as many a dauntless Avar told me—with glacier water for his drink, and nothing but mast on his tattered lap, and to see a hundred fat round fellows, who had come into his land quite lean, laughing and joking at his own door, with the milk of his best cow at their lips, and the kids of his flock coming up to them in sniffs from the fires where they were roasting, this he assured me—and I could quite believe him—turned his empty digestion into bile, and the love of his native land into a hollow ache. And this very feeling, in a higher form, cost my dear father his valiant life, and left me and my sister orphans.
"You may have heard of the defeat and slaughter of an entire Russian column, under the great Prince Dorougoff, which our gallant mountain forces, with my father second in command, accomplished most effectually. Everybody knows what glory and renown accrued to the stout Imaum through this; but all of our men who were present declared that my father deserved the main credit. The Emperor of Russia had grown impatient, and sent impetuous orders that his army should advance at once into the heart of the defiles, and crush the rebellion—as he dared to call it, though we never had been his subjects—at one mighty blow, and for ever. The Commander replied that he would march His Majesty's army in, but never would march it out again. And according to that answer, so it was. Our men became tired of slaughter, although they had many a long year of suffering to avenge.
"As might have been expected, the mountaineers grew careless after this great victory, and left many of their passes open; for the stubborn foe had recoiled, and appeared unable to do anything more until the following season. My father went home to see to his affairs, and to secure a new supply of rifles, for he had brought from Koorbashi a score of those skilled workmen of Genoese descent, who for accuracy and finish can hold their own with the best gunmakers in the world. All Shamyl's best troops were armed with weapons procured from these admirable artisans, and the clumsy muskets of the Russian force were quite unfit to cope with them. Stepan has one of those Koorbashi rifles, which you would find it hard to match in London, either for beauty of design or for excellence in shooting. But alas they were all muzzle-loaders, or the Caucasus might have been Caucasian still.
"Karthlos Tower, where our family had dwelled for many generations, takes its name from that same descendant of Noah who founded Mischel; and standing on a mountain plateau, with chasms abrupt and vertical cleaving the land to immeasurable depths, it is safe against all adverse powers, except treachery and famine. Among the labyrinth of ravines no stranger could ever find his road; and if chance at last brought him to the winding access, discretion would hurry him shuddering away. For many a black muzzle would look down upon him, and if he escaped all those, a score of yellow ones would confront him at the final crest, and of tenfold size,—brass artillery from Koorbashi.
"It was growing dark in those cloven depths, though the sun was still hovering upon the upper world, when my father rode round the last sharp jag at the foot of the ascent to Karthlos. The survivors of his war-dwindled force were only a few yards behind him, lounging on their tired horses, and scarcely caring to keep up the burden of their homeward song. Then when their leader was round the point, they heard the roar of a heavy gun, swinging like a wing-flap from wall to wall, and departing in the distance, like an echo climbing stairs. They spurred to know what it could mean, and they found Sûr Dadian dead on the neck of his horse.
"I had not seen my father more than half a dozen times, so far as childish memory goes; but he was always kind and loving, and very gentle with us. We had lost our mother before we knew her; and Marva and myself, twin children, had been sent from home, we could not tell when, to be educated at Tiflis. There our father had some old friends, and being so seldom at home, by reason of this perpetual war, he had done the best he could for us. I was placed in the German town on the left bank of the Kur, and under the care of a learned man, famous even in the "City of many tongues" for his knowledge of all useful languages. He had several English pupils, and admiring Shakespeare as the Germans do, he made us almost as familiar with English as if we were born to it. But Marva, my sister, had her education in the school of a French convent on the other side of the river. Twins as we were, and pining long at this unnatural severance, the force of events, and the power of education, drove us further and further apart, until the early divergencies of tastes and dispositions became so hardened and widened that our mutual love was vanishing.
"The murder of my father—for it could be nothing else—occurred in the autumn of 1852; but it was not known in Tiflis until three months later, for the city had long been in Russian hands, and Shamyl's victorious troops allowed very little communication. Even when known, it was kept from me, for some time longer, as I have reason to believe, by order of the College authorities. At last I knew it by a letter from Shamyl himself, or written by his orders—for he dispensed very largely with literature—which it took me a long time to make out, for I had almost forgotten the Avar tongue. How he smuggled it to me, I know not; but at last I understood it to this effect.